Eyes on the Street: The Not-So-Barren Jackson Heights Plaza

Marking Eid-ul-Fitr at Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights. Photo: office of Council Member Danny Dromm

Business owners in Jackson Heights have done more than just take over maintenance of the plaza on 37th Road. They’ve rechristened it “Diversity Plaza,” and they staged a community celebration that concluded on Monday to mark Eid-ul-Fitr, the breaking of fast at the end of Muslim holy month Ramadan. It seems the plaza was anything but empty that night. Eid Mubarak to all!

Photo: office of Council Member Danny Dromm

Stephen Miller
is a reporter for Streetsblog NYC. He has been covering the movement for safer streets, effective transit, and livable cities since 2012.

Perhaps it is a true glimpse of diversity to have a Muslim celebration taking place outside a liquor store.

http://485i.com Brian Van Nieuwenhoven

Half of that crowd is an undercover NYPD surveillance team, I bet

Anonymous

All I see are a lot of stores with less people than otherwise because potential customers cannot find parking.

JSK and her war on drivers! She thinks this is Copenhagen! I’m Angry Person.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7995989@N03/ J

This is pretty incredible. NYC neighborhoods often lack centers, places where people go to congregate. If you ask someone in Chelsea, for example, what the center of the neighborhood is, you’d probably get 5 different answers, none of them particularly strong. The same was probably true in Jackson Heights until recently. With a public space like this in such a central part of the neighborhood, the center of Jackson Heights is now quite obvious. It’s there, right by the Kebab King.

carma

Jackson Heights is the TRUE melting pot of NYC. Always has. No other place in the city has EVERY race/nationality congregated the way JH does. You have Indian, Sikh, Punjab, Muslim, Hispanic, Korean, Chinese, Columnbian, Puerto Rican, White, Black, Thai, okay im losing count, etc…

Joe R.

How can anyone be opposed to something like this? We could use more of these, particularly in places like downtown Flushing.

Miles Bader

Cool!

The selection of stores in this picture is pretty hilarious too (Kebab King, Discount Liquors, Queen of Sheba Candy Store…)

One thing I notice is that the plaza actually seems kind of small for the crowds. I’m thinking they’ll have to enlarge it in the future, shut down some more streets to traffic…